The Edmonton Oilers have waived Mark Fayne, which comes as no surprise. Fayne has struggled almost since the day he arrived in Edmonton to make a positive impact with the team.

Oilers coach Todd McLellan sent him to the minors in 2015-16 after he struggled in a Top 4 role with Andrej Sekera.

The same happened last year when Fayne made four appearances in Edmonton, but 39 in Bakersfield. By the end of the 2016-17 season, Fayne had been surpassed on the Bakersfield depth chart by Dillon Simpson, Mark Fraser, Griffin Reinhart, Jordan Oesterle and Ziyat Paigin. Fayne was on the bottom pairing with Ben Betker.

He reported to training camp in excellent shape and hung in to this late round of NHL cuts but that speaks more to the lack of depth on the Oil’s blueline. With Ryan Stanton out and unable to prove his merit and with Yohann Avuitu struggling so far in camp it’s evident that the Oilers could use more NHL quality depth on the roster.

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The Fayne demotion has salary cap implications. This in from CapFriendly: “If Mark Fayne clears waivers and is sent to the AHL, the #Oilers will benefit from $1.025M in cap relief, reducing his cap hit to $2.6M.”

If the Oilers have a player on the NHL roster making less than $1.025 million, they will get a net cap benefit from demoting Fayne. Auvitu’s NHL salary is $700,000, while Dillon Simpson’s is $675,000. The Oilers aren’t in a spot where they need cap relief right now, of course, so it’s most likely that Fayne’s demotion was based on merit, and the Oilers have decided Auvitu is simply a better bet right now than is Fayne. From what I’ve seen of both players that makes sense. While both Auvitu and Fayne are suspect on defence at the NHL level, Auvitu is a solid puckmover, while Fayne is not.

When it came to making major individual mistakes that contributed to Grade A scoring chances against the Oilers, Fayne had the highest rate of any Oilers d-man these past two seasons.

When it came to individual contributions on the attack, Fayne had the lowest rate of contributions to goals, to scoring chances and to Grade A scoring chances.

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